Places to Visit
10 Most Amazing Facts About Kasauli
Check out these amazing facts about Kasauli to explore this quaint little town in a better and interesting light…
1. Kasauli land sold for Rs 5,000
Britishers had bought the land for establishing Kasauli from Rana Bije Singh of the Baghat state for Rs 5000 and for an annual payment of Rs 507. The annual payment was also discontinued after some time. Hill state Baghat was spread up to Solan at that time.
More land was added in 1844 by acquiring nearby villages of Chattian and Nari on the Kasauli hill from the Bija state. The additional land was bought for Rs 100.
2. Sunnyside: The first house of Kasauli
Henry Lawrence, a British army officer, who founded the Sanawar school, was the first foreign settler to build a house in Kasauli. He got himself built a cottage and named it Sunnyside in around 1841, a year before Kasauli was founded.
Henry Lawrence used to live with his family in the nearby Sabathu and had moved to Kasauli after the death of his infant daughter. The owners have changed but the Sunnyside cottage stands intact even today.
3. Lawrence school in Mussoorie, not Sanawar
Yes, when Henry Lawrence was planning to open a school or military asylum for the orphaned children of British soldiers, he wanted it to be in Mussoorie and then Kasauli and finally chose Sanawar.
Lawrence had proposed in 1845 that the school should come up in Mussoorie but within the next year changed his mind as ‘it was too far off from any European station.’ In the final proposal, Sanawar hills were selected for the school with Lawrence calculating the estimated cost of each child in the school to be Rs 10 per month.
4. Gilbert trail is called Gilbert trail because…
Gilbert nature trail of Kasauli is named after one of its best-known residents — Major General Walter Raleigh Gilbert. An army officer, Gilbert had got himself built a bungalow in Kasauli in 1845.
Today, it’s the official residence of the station commander of Kasauli and is known as the Flagg Staff house or simply the Gilbert house.
5. General Dyer’s Kasauli connection
Reginald Edward Dyer, nicknamed the ‘Butcher of Amritsar,’ was the son of master brewer Edward Abraham Dyer, who had set up his first brewery in India in Kasauli in 1855.
Reginald Edward Dyer is mostly remembered for the barbaric act of ordering the army to fire into a crowd of unarmed civilians in Amritsar’s Jallianwala Bagh on April 13, 1919.
6. Monkey Point was Tapp’s Nose
Monkey Point, the highest point of Kasauli, used to be called Tapp’s nose. It was named so after Colonel H T Tapp, who was posted in Sabathu and served as a political agent to the Simla hill states from 1836 to 1841, and carried out the first survey of Kasauli.
The survey by Tapp was one of the first steps towards building a military station in Kasauli. But does it really look like Tapp’s nose? Well, we are trying to get Tapp’s photograph.
7. Kasauli girl Sandra Hotz goes to Hollywood
Sandra Hotz, who grew up in Kasauli, had married British film director David Lean, the director of epic movies like The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and A Passage to India. Sandra’s father Robert Hotz owned Alasia hotel in Kasauli and lived in the Groombridge bungalow.
Sandra had met Lean in Kasauli when she was 20 and married Lean in 1981. She had also done a cameo in Lean’s A Passage to India.
8. ‘Fori Auntie’ of Kasauli
Shobha Nehru, the wife of B K Nehru, the cousin of India’s first Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru, lived the latter part of her life in Kasauli. Born Magdolna Friedmann in Hungary, she had become Shobha Nehru after her marriage to Nehru in 1935.
But in Kasauli she was known as Fori auntie among locals. She died in her house in Kasauli on April 27, 2017, at the age of 108.
9. Who let the dogs out?
Kasauli was a major centre of research on rabies and it was here at the Pasteur Institute of India (later renamed as the Central Research Institute or CRI) that David Semple, a British military officer, had developed a vaccine, known as the ‘Semple vaccine,’ for treating rabies.
There was a time when people from all over would reach Kasauli to get treatment for the dog bite cases. Late author Khushwant Singh had said in a lighter vein in one of his columns that this brought a bad name to Kasauli.
“There was a time when the very mention of Kasauli raised people’s eyebrows: Kyoon paagal kuttey nay kaata hai” (why, have you been bitten by a mad dog?) was the knee-jerk verbal reaction. It was much the same if you said you were going to Agra or Ranchi,” wrote Khushwant Singh.
10. The most famous resident of Kasauli
Writer and journalist Khushwant Singh lived in the Raj Villa and did most of his writing here. He was a popular face in Kasauli and could often be spotted taking long walks or chatting with locals.
A nature trail ‘Khushwant Singh Trail’ has been named after him and a literature festival ‘Khushwant Singh Lit Fest’ is held annually in Kasauli in his memory and to celebrate his love for Kasauli.
